synopsis:16 sacred minutes in the Cathedral of the Forest; the video opens blue, the beautiful rich Northern Hemisphere long blue twilight that slides so slow into night, with the shadows of the forest giants looming over most of the frame. From there, we travel further–rocks shaggy with moss line a rushing river, fed by a thundering waterfall. The camera takes us in close, a celluloid baptism! Then zooms out, slowly, the waterfall receding to a more comfortable distance. Sam Coomes’ hymnotic score chimes in, accompanied by birdsong and flybuzz. We float in the glory of the sun-dappled canopy until we are dropped, with the sound of a sledgehammer, into a rural human landscape, a woodshed and a chopping block. The forest becomes logs, fuel, handled expertly and patiently by a man wielding an axe in whose swing echoes both the millions of strokes that took down the legendary pre-European northwest woods, and the rhythm of the railroad spikes in the steel tracks that belted tight this wide land.